Computer War

He snapped at one of the senior secretaries, “What in the name of the Holy Ultimate is this?”

She looked mildly shocked at his language, and inadvertently shot a look over her shoulder but then caught herself in the realization that there would be no Temple Monks in the preserves of the Deputy of Propaganda. However, Jet Pirincin sometimes doubted that her chief was as devout as his high position would call for.

Jet said, apologetically, “The technicians are still installing it, Coaid Deputy.”

“I said, what the hell is it? It’s at the point where I can’t get to my own office through the curd this place is littered with.”

“Yes, Coaid Deputy Westley,” Jet said. She was mildly surprised. Ross Westley was usually on the easygoing side, as upper echelon coaids went. “As I understand, sir, it is a new development adapted to our commissariat which, by scanning any printed page, can give a plus or minus percentage of two, on the effect of the publication on the public.”

He looked at her sourly. “What’s new about that, Coaid Pirincin? We’ve got a bank of machines that’ll handle that sort of jetsam.”

“Yes, Coaid Deputy. I wouldn’t know, Coaid. The technicians know all about it. It’s some new departure.”

Ross snorted and sidestepped the new equipment to continue to his office. He muttered, “Why not turn the whole nardy government over to these technicians? They’re the only ones who know what’s going on.”

Jet Pirincin stared after him, more than mildly surprised now. Suppose there had been a Surety Coaid about. Admittedly, Deputy Westley was a member of the Central Comita, though a junior one, but you simply didn’t say such things. It amounted to criticism of the workings of the government. She shook her head. It was her opinion that Ross Westley was a pleasant enough boss to have, and even almost handsome in a craggy sort of way, but she decided it was just as well that his early training to be a teacher of history was thwarted. What might he have taught his students?

Ross growled at the door which opened automatically before him. It had been a long-time irritation. The damned mechanism didn’t read his mind, it read his physical presence. Suppose his desire was to approach the door but not go through it. Suppose his desire was to come up to the door and press his ear against it, so as to eavesdrop on someone within. The damned door wouldn’t let him! It opened, willy-nilly, upon his coming in proximity.

He grunted sourly. At least it was an improvement over the doors of his youth. They couldn’t read individuals and opened on the approach of anyone at all!

He realized he was in a miserable mood. He didn’t like the developments of the Central Comita session this afternoon. He didn’t like them at all. To the extent possible, he had been fighting the trend, but the Deputy of Propaganda was a low man on the totem pole and often not even called on to attend inmost staff sessions.

He sat and stared moodily and unseeingly at his orderbox. Finally he flicked a finger to activate it and said; “Is there anything on my desk?”

A voice answered him in detail and he said, “Switch it to Assistant Deputy Bauserman and cut all calls to me for the next two hours.”

“Yes, Coaid.”

He sat for a moment, then surreptitiously flicked a small stud on the ring on his right little finger, with the thumbnail of his left hand. From the side of his eyes, he observed what would seem to be a star sapphire set in the ring. It gleamed no more than ordinarily.

Evidently, he decided, his complaint of a month or so ago had brought results. If the highly developed little mop he had in the ring was effective, his quarters were no longer bugged. Rank had its privileges, even in the Free Democratic Commonwealth of Alphaland.

He got to his feet, went over to what would appear to be a closet door and opened it. The personal pneumatic car inside was strictly a one-man affair. He wedged into it, closed the door behind him, threw the vacuum control, and began dialing his destination. He was too orientated to the transportation method to be distressed by the sudden drop-away and then the surge of acceleration.

The car came to a halt and flicked the green light for him. He threw off the vacuum control, opened the door and stepped out. He was at the entry port of one of Alphacity’s more popular parks. He considered momentarily, but then threw the control which would send his car to a nearby parking area. His station would have allowed him to monopolize the place indefinitely but of recent months Ross Westley was, possibly unbeknownst to himself, becoming unhappy about many of his prerogatives.

He walked toward the park center, as though heading for the famed Interplanetary Zoo, but managed to check, two or three times over, whether or not he was being tailed. As far as he could see, he wasn’t.

He started for his true destination.

Tilly Trice looked up at his entrance into her shop. She winked perkily and blew him a kiss, but didn’t get up from her work.

She was, he told himself all over again, the most unlikely young woman a powerful and wealthy governmental head could ever expect to make himself a fool over. She was tiny. Her figure could hardly have been less, being that of a teenage boy, rather than one of the current TriDi sex symbols. Her face was pert rather than pretty, not to speak of beautiful. Admittedly, her features were clean, her carriage soldier-straight, her voice a dream of gentility.

But by no stretch of the imagination would any historic period of man’s evolution, whether on Mother Earth or out here in the stars, have pinned the label of glamour girl on Tilly Trice.

At best, she would have made the grade as the famed girl next door, a boy’s best pal.

She was fiddling with some red leather and a pot of glue. And it came to him that it was probably real leather. He wondered where she’d imported it from. Holy Ultimate, from Earth? The space freight alone! But then, of course, Tilly Trice’s customers were the most ultra-wealthy the planet provided and were not of Alphaland alone. In fact, she boasted clients in every nation of this world.

She said, that faint mockery in her voice, “Hi, Coaid.”

“Don’t call me that,” he growled.

She went, “Tu, tu, tu. Nardy temper today.”

“Don’t swear,” he growled. “It doesn’t become a half-pint. It sounds incongruous, a four letter word coming out of your mouth.”

“Nardy,” she said righteously, “is a five letter word. I know some four letter ones. You want to hear them?”

“No. Number One held another session today. Graves had the final computer returns.”

She dropped her light air. “Oh,” she said,

“They were as bad as I told you they would be. Graves gives Betastan a little better than two months.”

“Oh, he does!” she said tartly, her attitude suddenly that of a defiant child.

He eyed her unhappily. “Listen, Till, what do your own computers carry on this? You’ve had enough material turned over to you to program…”

She was shaking her head to silence him. She got up and approached one of the dusty bookshelves that lined the shop’s walls. She stared unseeingly at a short row of German language first editions.

Tilly shook her head again. “I won’t give you any jetsam, Rossie. We have a few computers in Betastan, but nothing like the number you have here. None of them have been directed toward the military. Even after my warnings came through.”

“But why not!”

She looked at him. “I think it’s a bit difficult to explain our way of thinking to someone with your background, Rossie. But let me use an example. Back in the very old days on Earth, when the nations were perpetually arming—do you remember their terminology? They were all expending the gigantic sums involved in defense. It was a gobbledygook term. Nobody ever spent money on offense, it was always defense. By the oldest traditions of our race, the oldest teachings, he who lives by the sword, dies by it. And over and over again it was seen that those nations which built large military machines sooner or later found occasion to use them. Sometimes because they were attacked, more often they found occasion to attack—by flimsy excuse, or otherwise.”

“What are you driving at?”

She sighed. “We’re trying a new theory in Betastan.”